TOO CLOSE TO CALL IN GA.
Razor-thin margins in pair of runoffs to determine control of U.S. Senate
ATLANTA — Georgia officials counted the final votes of the nation’s turbulent 2020 election season on Tuesday night as polls closed in two critical races that will determine control of the U.S. Senate and, in turn, the fate of President- elect Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.
The two Senate runoff elections are leftovers from the November general election, when none of the candidates hit the 50% threshold. Democrats need to win both races to seize the Senate majority — and, with it, control of the new Congress when Biden takes office in two weeks.
President Donald Trump encouraged his loyalists to turn out in force even as he undermined the integrity of the electoral system by pressing unfounded claims of voter fraud to explain away his own defeat in Georgia.
As of late Tuesday night, it was too early to call the close races.
In one contest, Republican Kelly Loeffler, a 50-year- old former businesswoman who was appointed to the Senate less than a year ago by the state’s governor, faced Democrat Raphael Warnock, 51, who serves as the senior pastor of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. grew up and preached.
The other election pitted 71-yearold former business executive David Perdue, a Republican who held his Senate seat until his term expired on Sunday, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former congressional aide and journalist. At just 33 years old, Ossoff would be the Senate’s youngest member.
With 95% of precincts reporting, Warnock held a tiny lead over Loeffler, and Perdue and Ossoff were in a virtual dead heat.
This week’s elections mark the formal finale to the heated 2020 election season more than two months after the rest of the nation finished voting. The heightened significance of the runoffs transformed Georgia, once a solidly Republican state, into one of the nation’s premier battlegrounds during the final days of Trump’s presidency.
Biden and Trump campaigned for their candidates in person on the eve of the election, though some Republicans feared Trump may have confused voters by continuing to make wild claims of voter fraud as he tries to undermine Biden’s victory.
The president has assailed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, repeatedly for rejecting his fraud contentions and raised the prospect that some ballots might not be counted even as votes were being cast Tuesday afternoon.
State officials said there were no major problems with voting on Tuesday.
Gabriel Sterling, a top official with the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said voting was smooth across the state with minimal wait times, though lines of around an hour built up in Republican-leaning Houston, Cherokee, Paulding and Forsyth counties.
Carters won’t attend inaugural; Bushes will be present
Former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter will not attend Presidentelect Joe Biden’s inauguration. It marks the first time the couple, 96 and 93, will have missed the ceremonies since Carter was sworn in as the 39th president in 1977.
A spokeswoman at The Carter Center in Atlanta said the Carters have sent Biden and Vice President- elect Kamala Harris their “best wishes” and “look forward to a successful administration.”
The Carters have spent the coronavirus pandemic mostly at their home in Plains, Georgia, where both were raised and where they returned after leaving the White House in 1981.
Separately, former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, will attend the inauguration in person. Their spokesman, Freddy Ford, said, “President and Mrs. Bush look forward to returning to the Capitol for the swearing in of President Biden and Vice President Harris.”
The Bushes also attended President Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Ford added that “witnessing the peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of our democracy that never gets old.”
Carter was the first former president to confirm his plans to attend Trump’s inauguration in 2017. The Carters were seated on the aisle, next to former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, and former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush. The elder Bush was the lone former president at the time who did not attend Trump’s inauguration.